Lessons From The Young Woman Who Became My Mother

How old photos of my mom gave me a new perspective on motherhood

I recently received an extraordinary gift when the daughter of my mother’s longtime friend mailed me a handful of photographs I didn’t know existed. They were pictures of my mother, taken in 1955 when she was just 28.

That may not sound like a big deal, but those photos revealed a side of my mother I’d never seen before. She was a new wife then, and had just joined her husband (my dad) overseas. The camera caught her in a playful mood, and the radiance of her youth was endearing, if not completely foreign to me.

I mean, do any of us really know what our moms were like before we were born?

My mother was almost 40 when I came along, making me the youngest daughter of a woman who’d seen a lot of things.

As an Air Force officer’s wife, she’d experienced more than enough racism during the years she and my dad were stationed in various locations around the country. Black military couples weren’t immune to prejudice.

What’s more, America had been marred by a violent cocktail of racially-motivated killings in the South, high-profile assassinations, the Vietnam War, and widespread unrest that forever changed Mom’s hometown, Washington, DC.

While I remember Mom as being classy, dignified, and God-fearing, she’d experienced some of the toughest realities of American society, and had witnessed a powerful backlash against civil rights. I think that caused her to become rigid and guarded. At least, that’s how I viewed her when I began to come of age.

However, when I first laid eyes on those photographs, taken almost seventy years ago, I couldn't help but ponder the weighty responsibilities that hid my mother’s youthful glow over time.

I thought about what it must’ve been like raising daughters as an ‘older mom’ when the views of my generation were vastly different from hers. I know for a fact she disapproved of my oldest sister’s Afro (which I thought was totally epic, by the way).

The world is always changing and challenging us. Yet, it never waits for moms to have it all figured out.

As the mother of three adult sons, I’m often riding on a rollercoaster of emotions. I don’t think that ever goes away no matter how old your children are. You’ll always be concerned about them and you’ll wonder if you’ve done your best.

At once, being a mother brings immense joy and a tangle of worry.

What I found most interesting about studying my mother at such a young age was that, I saw someone who was totally unconcerned about . . . well, me.

I saw my mother as simply a woman who had no kids to fret over. I saw someone who had dreams and ideas for her future. Someone who was carefree; a woman who had no idea that, one day, I’d be in her life, and along with my sisters, would demand every ounce of her patience.

Seeing the woman in my mother reminded me to reclaim the woman in myself, the one that got buried under my motherly responsibilities. Especially now that my husband and I are empty-nesters, it’s time to revisit those things that got put on the shelf.

That’s what my mother did.

After my sisters and I left home, she picked up where she left off, rediscovering her youthful zest by traveling with my dad and fulfilling some of her long-held dreams, even going back to school.

I’ve realized that, although she was wholly devoted to her family, my mother was also devoted to self-care, way before that was a thing.

Even through the challenging times, she took care of herself and exercised her faith. And beneath her reserved demeanor, she was nurturing that vivacious 28-year-old young woman all along.

In her twilight years, she’d become a doting grandmother who insisted that she never felt old. She continued to live with purpose and gratitude, even after the loss of my father.

Mom disarmed life’s disappointments by conjuring up life’s blessings.

She continued to make new friends, and she helped others in her community up until the day she left this earth in 2018 at the age of 91.

Those decades-old photographs hold a profound yet simple lesson for me and all moms: never lose sight of who you are beyond motherhood. That’s one of the best Mother’s Day gifts we could ask for.

My mother (Betty Smith) and me, May 2014.

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Kelly’s debut book, THE WEATHER OFFICER, will be available later in 2024.